TARA DILLARD

Friday, January 18, 2019

"If a woman has a closet full of clothes but nothing to wear, she doesn't know herself very well." Bill Blass. "Our lives are about getting the outside to match the inside." Karl Jung. What does your landscape say about you? What do you think of the landscape, below? Words, not thoughts. Can you write words about the landscape, below, and its mechanics of being? How old is this landscape, below, in the realm of landscape design? Is this a 'done' landscape, below? Is this a landscape not-done, below? How do you know the difference?
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Historic world class landscapes, after centuries, if they exist at all, present a unified trinity, Wildwood, Meadow, Stone Focal Point. Varies little across cultures/continents. Until the 20th century peoples were mostly agrarian/pastoral. Born ca. '60, I was raised in a subdivision, pure industrialized landscaping. Nothing agrarian/pastoral in my personal life.

How is this landscape, below, considered? What words does an industrialized human, especially American, have to use, describing the landscape, below? No worries, took me 2 college degrees and decades of studying historic landscapes across Europe/America to find the words for this garden. Worse, it was only in the past few years, I learned the 'why' of this landscape, below.
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(Canopy, understory, meadow, focal point, flow, contrast, texture, layers, pollinator habitat, no chemicals needed. You, you are needed, here, to enjoy the garden.)

Drama with the garden, above, evolves, below. Enter, the hedge and a focal point. Do you know what you're looking at, below? I know, it's a book on new modern landscape design.
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Focal point, below, shot at a different angle could look freshly installed at MoMA. Yet there it sits in a centuries old agrarian new modern landscape.

Industrialized landscapes don't function upon the myriad layers of this landscape, above/below. Do you know what functions are missing? Do you know what happens in industrialized landscapes, that do not happen in the landscape above/below? What if you think you know what happens, but your answers are wrong? Are you sure your answers, so far, to all my questions, are right?

Those hedges, below, be still my heart. At the front end of my career, industrialized learning, worse, industrialized living, I was taught hedges create garden rooms. Decades accepting hedges create garden rooms, as the sole answer. Why not? Good industrialized parrot, I was. Looking back, cringing, at the shill an industrialized narrative and life had made of me.
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No worries if you don't have answers to my questions. Most people are not born Garden Whisperers. I was. Few are born each century, and what joy when we find each other. Some of you, reading this, may be realizing you are a Garden Whisperer too. Welcome ! Conversely, I know life having lost several Garden Whisperer friends. Beloved knows them too, though they died before I met him. That's how much they mean to me.

Hedges do create garden rooms, and more. Hedges next to meadows create a safe haven for insects/wildlife and are Earth's maximum pollinator habitat. Life happens in the margins. We're not separate from these facts. We evolved with microbiomes in the landscape, without them, we die. More, studies showing how much microbiomes within us affect our mental health. Won't go further, you can extrapolate for yourself.
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Enter stage, too exciting, Stick Trees, below, hedges in the air. Centuries of design with Stick Trees. Beginning when we 'lived' in our landscapes, not merely drove thru them into the garage, or look at them from inside our HVAC homes.
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Canopy trees, oaks/maples/etc, are Rivers in the Sky. Water transported from the ground high into the air, Earths first Swamp Cooler. More, pollinators are at all layers from ground to tops of canopy trees. Stick trees, in addition to allees for walking, or adding privacy, are a layer beneath understory trees, for pollinators.
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Has it struck you about this garden, above/below, that it's a garden for meandering? Noticed how showy it is, yet all green? Noticed flowers are not the objective, yet entirely the objective? This garden is agrarian flowered vs. industrially flowered with greenhouses, big box nurseries, bagged potting soil, transportation issues..... Further, it is what a Garden Whisperer 'knows' as flowers vs. flowers sold as the industrialized ideal. Flowers, above/below, millenia in the making for man/beast/insect/fungi.

Agrarian based landscapes vs. Industrialized landscapes teach lessons. Agrarian landscapes invite us into their world. Industrialized landscapes invite us to look. Agrarian landscapes need no chemicals, are not toxic to groundwater & wildlife/insects/people. Before humans, Earth made itself a garden. Following agrarian templates, inviting us into the garden vs. the template of industrialized landscapes, keeping us out of the garden, while selling their upkeep, is the post/modern choice. Where to take language at this point? We are post modern with our industrialized landscapes, agrarian gardens are the new modern.

A recent study on those who live the longest concluded with the top 3 things about why they lived so long, gardening was one of them.
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"...sometimes the world disrobes, slips its dress off a shoulder, stops time for a beat. If we look up at that moment, it's not due to any ability of ours to pierce the darkness, it's the world's brief bestowal. The catastrophe of grace." Anne Michaels. Agrarian based landscapes are thin places, where catastrophe-of-grace is designed to happen.
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"Researchers analyzing soil from Ireland long thought to have medicinal properties have discovered that it contains a previously unknown strain of bacteria which is effective against four of the top six superbugs that are resistant to antibiotics, including MRSA."

Macro views, above, of the garden rooms. Where a Garden begins, below, from inside views. Industrialized landscapes originate from the street view, looking at the house, not being in the house looking out. Often, that is why a client hires me, they tried for years to DIY, not realizing their point of origination was wrong, with a few layers after that wrong too. No worries if that is you, it was me at the front end. My excuse? A horticulture degree teaching me. What we unlearn, sets us free.

The Well Placed Chair, below. Centuries of The Well Placed Chair. What did I learn after putting them into my own garden? The Well Placed Chair became a part of everyday life. Great for setting things on if I was fluffing the garden, best for a spot with lunch, and phone calls. From the first, having lunch in one of my Well Placed Chairs I learned the garden came into me, as I had never allowed it while moving about. Sitting still, hummingbirds swirl about my head, butterflies land on me, as if I was merely another part of the garden, sounds and their variations, not heard before, are heard, the level of my eyes, taking everything in is different, richer, and 'rest' while in the Well Placed Chair intensified, now learned to be Earthing, aka, Grounding.

You didn't get the heads-up about this garden, above/below, it's famous, the owner at bottom. Had to smile seeing the livestock, above, the owner probably has the property in an agricultural easement for taxes.

"Elegance is refusal.", Coco Chanel. Simplicity.
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This garden, all pics, above, belongs to Catherine Deneuve, below.
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Pic, above, here.
."Life foists roles on us all; the challenge is to accept these costumes without letting the private core of you become pure quicksilver.", Thomas Browne, 17th century. When you have an agrarian styled new modern landscape for your life's stage, costumes come & go, and don't matter, you're working with the best director, Providence..Quote, above, from, Aeon..
Pic, above, here.
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Grace is not a commodity. Grace is active, on its own initiative and timing. A real stinker when you're needing grace, and it's no where to be bought, grabbed, coerced. Without intention of finding a place for grace to be found, I did. And it's there for you too in the new modern agrarian landscape.
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Pic, above, here.
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Notice Hubert Reeves, "Nature", above? Within the past decade it became the same for me. A singular epiphany about nature being truly Nature.
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Pic, above, here.
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Agrarian new modern landscapes are the unspoken at the edge of the spoken.
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Pic, above, here .
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Ralph Austen, above, I certainly have a to-do list for heaven, meeting you is now on the list ! Orchards have meant a lot to the evolution of my Garden Design career, in the agrarian new modern landscape. Culminating after touring Israel, with my parents, in the foot steps of Jesus for 2 weeks. Specifically, the garden of Gethsemane where Jesus went before being crucified, to pray. Imagine my shock discovering the garden of Gethsemane is an orchard. Once home, planted my orchard. BTW, an orchard can be a single fruiting tree. If you can't have an orchard you can certainly have the metaphor. Though I did manage 6 espaliered fruit trees on my less than 1/4 acre, and named my home, Orchard House.
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Pic, above, here.
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Isn't it best when we remove our own veils of ignorance? Away from the world, in the loving preserve of Nature. There, it's accepted as epiphany, appreciated as a gift, change is wrought, in joy. At least, that is what my garden does for me.
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Pic, above, here.
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Everyone has a unique learning method. Gardens, oddly, are mine. If you've understood this post so far, gardens are your teacher too. We put our time to what we value. Growing up my father was the lion of the Serengeti. Had to pay attention, lions bite. Kept my butt off his Serengeti. Created my own world, away...away from the lion. Ironically, I was the one helping him with the yard and pool. Gardening was an arena we could co-exist. More proof, oh garden how great thou are.
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Skipped my senior year of high school for college, more getting away from dad's Serengeti than brains. Lion, above, looks a bit like my dad the day he dropped me off at SMU freshman year. Of course you can guess who I look like now, dad.
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Pic, above, here.
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Humility has many teachers, the garden is a teacher of humility, if you pay attention, it's also a stage to heal the wounds from other teachers of humility.
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Pic, above, here.
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Need to forgive someone? Perhaps you knew this was coming? Agrarian landscapes teach forgiveness. If you doubt that, trust that an agrarian landscape is a place to go pray for forgiveness. 2018 was my year to learn about a forgiveness given in 1986, while in my garden.
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For this sole fact alone, I would garden.
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Garden & Be Well, XO T

Friday, December 14, 2018

France was an education in Garden Design with Trees while studying historic gardens there. French Garden Design, with bushes/perennials removed, leaving trees, are wicked good in intellect while magnificently more beautiful. A concept not approached in USA Garden Design.
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This dear Garden Design, below, not French but still, only trees, no bushes/perennials.
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Would be fun to use same plants/house, below, in the French manner. What does that mean? Add garden rooms, entries, allees, focal points on axis, pots, urns, gravel, stone, to the Garden Design, below.
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Quite a few rich intricacies, below. Trees for buffering winter winds, saving on HVAC, trees for buffering summer sun, saving on HVAC, and trees for pollinators, trees for food to the kitchen, trees raise property values, trees providing privacy, trees providing all year color.

Pic, above, here. Maybe not French, but amazing.....trees.
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Pic, above, here.
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" I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want to own. Andy Warhol "
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Garden & Be Well, XO T
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"So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness." Hermann Hesse
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."It all starts with the wolves. Wolves disappeared from Yellowstone, the world’s first national park, in the 1920s. When they left, the entire ecosystem changed. Elk herds in the park increased their numbers and began to make quite a meal of the aspens, willows, and cottonwoods that lined the streams. Vegetation declined and animals that depended on the trees left. The wolves were absent for seventy years. When they returned, the elks’ languorous browsing days were over. As the wolf packs kept the herds on the move, browsing diminished, and the trees sprang back. The roots of cottonwoods and willows once again stabilized stream banks and slowed the flow of water. This, in turn, created space for animals such as beavers to return. These industrious builders could now find the materials they needed to construct their lodges and raise their families. The animals that depended on the riparian meadows came back, as well. The wolves turned out to be better stewards of the land than people, creating conditions that allowed the trees to grow and exert their influence on the landscape." Peter Wohlleben,The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate. Via, Brain Pickings, here. .
Pic, above, here.
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Pic, above, here.
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Pic, above, here.
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Designing with only trees too simple ?

Monday, December 10, 2018

Which major Landscape Design rule do you see, below?
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Which subsidiary Landscape Design rules do you see, below?
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If you had this single garden pic, below, to teach a Garden Design course, what does your hand-out look like? What are its headings?

Pic, above, here.
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Great wisdom, above.
.Choose a pot so wonderful, it never needs planting.
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What else about this pot, above, must be copied in your garden? For every pot, focal point, and piece of garden furniture you consider, ask yourself, "Is this piece so wonderful it will be fought over at my estate sale?"
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Another bit of wisdom from, above?
.A garden designed to look beautiful in winter, will be beautiful all year.
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Best Garden Design book ever written, is titled, The Garden In Winter, by Rosemary Verey.
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How best to site groupings of plantings? Contrast foliage textures, colors, sizes, contrast shapes of plant silhouettes, mix evergreen plantings with deciduous, create architecture of a room/s with ceiling (sky)-walls-floors, include art/function/change thru the seasons, site focal points on axis from main views of the house, plantings must include scent/blooms/fall color/berries, plantings must be deer resistant/drought tolerant/bug-fungus proof and cycle with interest throughout the year.
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This is fun, from a single garden pic we've already started a nice Garden Design course.
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Urn, above, is a delight, in memory at my own stupidity, ahead of epiphany. How do you think I was able to have an empty pot epiphany? Seriously, anyone out there had the Empty Pot Epiphany too? Found a quote this year my mom wrote down, "Genius may have its limitations but stupidity is not handicapped."
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Yes, these bits of Garden Design are this important, for me to repeat, repeat, repeat..... If you don't have The Garden In Winter, plenty of used at good prices with the link.
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Copied a simple historic garden room, in our ca. 1900 home this year, a life moment arrived recently, and beyond measure that garden room, and Nature, tended, in great love, not only a life moment, but the entirety of my life. Why do you want to Garden Design? I know why I do, it's for those moments, knowing another may never come. And that is fine, what has been received already is beyond measure.

Friday, November 16, 2018

Garden Designs are Interior Designs. I cannot do a Garden Design without seeing a home's interiors. Table & chest & mantle surfaces dictate, happily, how I will design particular spaces in a client's garden. Obviously, more in a home inform a good Garden Design, but only using the table/chest/mantle surface feast, below, for now.
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My grandmother, Laura, could play the piano from newspaper/magazine/book writing. When you're Appalachian poor, you figure it out. Using interior surfaces for Garden Design 'playing' comes from my grandmother Laura, I assume, and glad of it.
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Garden Design, below, is a backdrop hedge, pair of evergreen large shrubs or a pair of trees, and a drift of 2 shrubs, with a single accent shrub modestly sited as focal point from the drift of shrubs.
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Easy, yes? Now you understand my grandmother Laura too.

Pic, above, here.
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This Garden Design, below, a bit more challenging without seeing the rest of the house. A backdrop hedge, pair of understory trees, evergreen groundcover carpeting the space, and a focal point subtle in scale at center.

Pic, above, here.
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Now you are good at table/chest/mantle top Garden Designs too, yes?
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Been doing this so long it's an amusement to peruse a home the first time, looking for copied echoes. Have not had a home with different brain wave surface decorating between rooms yet, they all flow. Interesting.
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Many times a client hires me because they've become 'stuck', not knowing what to do next in their landscape. Historic Garden design is so modern in its templates there is never a reason to truly be 'stuck' for Garden Design ideas.
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With good gardens on tour it's enjoyable noting the interior shapes/forms moving from inside to outside. The best gardens never display their true genesis. Inside & outside are one, Vanishing Threshold.
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Garden & Be Well, XOT

Tuesday, November 13, 2018

Furniture in the garden has always intrigued me, since becoming aware of furniture in the garden as 'a thing' watching an episode of Miss Marple on PBS in my early 20's. Furniture set upon the lawn for tea? Really? Move it there? Move it away? Never meant to stay in place...... Are you stupid? It's obvious I was raised in a once-and-done family landscape culture.
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This isn't technically about specifics of garden furniture, instead, Garden Designing with garden furniture.
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Perhaps this garden, below, is in France. Perhaps it's quite 'fine', aka expensive. No worries, Garden Design isn't about expensive, can be, but it's not.
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Garden, below, makes me see mid-century USA brick ranch homes in a new way. Do you see it now too?

Pic, above, here.
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Imagine this home, above, as a USA mid-century ranch burger, take away some of its original foundation plantings, leave 1-3, and espalier them flat against the house. Add gravel, furniture, almost done. What's left? Do you see it clearly too?
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Exterior color trinity, above. Historic gardens are designed with an exterior color trinity. Green/gray/black, above.
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More. Add a hedge, 3.5'-4', evergreen, toward the street. Why sit in your garden, above, and look at traffic, worse, breath in traffic's toxic particulates?
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For the mid-century ranch I would also get the next size larger, of the pots, above, and place them on a subtle plinth. Do you know the importance of this? Huge. May seem a bit 'off' yet it's brilliant. With a bit larger pot, they can be left empty all year, or planted at whim. Your life, you decide. No wrong answer.
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Do consider, strongly, drip irrigation if you plan on having containers planted.
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Too much lawn/space for all gravel? Keep the lawn, Tara Turf, hopefully you already have some trees, if not.....you'll want an interesting tree, or more.... More than the simplicity of this new Garden Design it's also less maintenance, zero chemicals/fertilizers, and maximum pollinator habitat, greater use of a new garden room, higher property value, lower HVAC expenses if HVAC considered with plant placement.
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It's humbling how many mid-century ranch USA homes still have their original builder installed landscapes. Pruning of hollies wanting to be trees, kept for over half a century at green meatball size. Humbling? Deeply.
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Seeing the inertia of human foible, keeping something because it's already there. Harmful, but there. Easier to keep, than change. As if I see all life layers this easy !

Monday, November 12, 2018

What is the first rule of Garden Design? Excellent question, knowing rules are not for me. Excepting, when rules make me, MORE me. Same template for the well-heeded mantra, Less-Is-More, yet occasionally that mantra best completed with, More-Is-Less. Perhaps knowing when Faux Geometry is more geometric than true geometry.
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Get the point? Good. The best life points have no clear words.
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Back to you, and making you More you with Garden Design rules. First rule of Garden Design, COPY.
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Garden Design, below, has been created at all price points and throughout recorded history, thousands of years.
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Vanishing Threshold, simplicity, sky, canopy, understory, walls, floors, focal point, color, texture, flow, seasons, scent, sound & etc.
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What brings this Garden Design alive? In the moment, it is dogs playing. Perhaps your permutation of this Garden Design, below, would have a sundial, about where the dogs are playing, maybe your grandchildren, perhaps a harvest table and dear friends for dinner.....

Pic, above, here.
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Writing this post I 'see' the portrait, history, and a memory. Studying historic gardens in England, we were on a ferry and our teacher pointed to a stately home on shore, large, pretty, extensive gardens, old, "The man who built that home was in the slave trade, international slave trade."
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Visceral knowledge, no words.
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Gardens & politics are often combined. Not going there, today. Excepting the pairing of gardens as refuge from the evils of politics.
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Amazingly, Gardens as refuge, is the same as, the-more-we-go-inward-the-more-we-outwardly-connect.
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Odd but true, use Garden Design rules to be more YOU, delve deep into your garden lifestyle, and connect more to the World. Would believe none of this, excepting the living of it. Was not seeking any of this, merely, a pretty garden.
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Garden & Be Well, XO T
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All Garden Design Rules are in previous posts....I know...must do that ebook, finally. Ironic, 5 books written with real publishers, set on the coffee table, yet no ebook. Saw my childhood piano teacher last week. She shared with Beloved how I was a hard student to teach because I wanted to be in charge of what I played, so she worked in that framework, and the rest, is music, and a pupil taught well. Receiving my horticulture degree, knew it was junk, and that was the start of decades across Europe studying historic gardens. Only mention these odd things because I was certainly not the personality to follow ANY rules. Kept digging, and what did I find? RULES. Providence laughs.

Pic, above, here.
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Working in a nursery, decades ago, I had the privilege of ordering plants, and unloading the 18-wheeler trucks they arrived in. Primula Auricula were some of those plants. Hard work? Understatement. Great joy in the work? Understatement.

Pic, above, here.
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Discovering Auricula Theatre recently had me in a swoon & pout. Why hadn't I known about Auricula Theatre sooner? In addition to 100's of Auriculas I had a dozen plus display scapes. Could have done several over-the-top Auricula Theatre's. Photos submitted to all the big & local papers, of course.

Pic, above, here.
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Mixed Auriculas, below, more than pretty, they make a statement about the state of nurseries now, vs. 'my era', decades ago. Purchasing a nice mix of Auriculas, below, to pot-up, rather difficult in the sourcing department now. My era? Family owned independent garden centers were plentiful across USA with myriad specialty plants readily/easily available. 2008 broke that business model.

Pic, above, here.
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Another demand I make from my garden? Being the gardener, above, some spring soon, with 10-15 little pots of mixed Auriculas grown from seed.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Truth? I have an unmatched pair of old wall clocks in the attic, innards long gone, both a prime theatre for a single plant, Primula Auricula Theatre. A sense of the ridiculous? Yes, another demand for my garden.

Before USA levied income taxes, private gardeners were not uncommon, below. Private gardeners, in Europe, mostly ended with WWI. Men went to war, no more proper pruning or caretaking conservatories & potagers properly, and certainly not repointing stone terraces on schedule. A threadbare history, but you understand the threads.

Naturalistic pruning is the prized pruning Nature thrives upon. Not merely me. Naturalistic pruning attracts pollinators, increasing crop yields by up to 80%. Combine naturalistic pruning with naturalistic planting methods, natural soil enrichments, and you've created maximum habitat for your health and myriad microbiomes needed for survival. In addition to less maintenance and not poisoning groundwater with fertilizers or other chemicals.

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Beyond the wisdom of using Nature, instead of killing Nature, there is the metaphor of what you want attracted into your Garden, and life, below. Perhaps, build-it-and-they-will-come, Field of Dreams, is more relevant.

Towards the end of the season, above, in my Naturalistic garden, doesn't look clipped/pruned in the least, does it? It is. But you're seeing the fullness of its decadence. Change thru the seasons, with good pruning. Once a year pruning, above.